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AT&T is accusing several Utah companies of fraudulently obtaining millions of telephone numbers of its customers in what it believes was a scheme to use them for telemarketing.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Dallas, AT&T said for the past five years the operators of interrelated companies that include Feature Films for Families Inc., All Things Families Inc. and CCI Communications LLC mined AT&T's caller ID database using tens of millions of fake calls to obtain telephone customers' names and numbers, including mobile ones.
Also named are Phil Iverson and Chris J. Gose, who the lawsuit says directed the operations that scoured the AT&T database and then moved them from state to state as the phone company detected the alleged fraud.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 26, said the operation stole valuable AT&T customer data, cost it at least $6.5 million and allegedly violated federal and state laws.
An attorney for the companies did not return an email and a voice mail seeking a response to the allegations. A call to CCI Communications also was not returned.
Starting in Utah in 2006, Feature Films for Families, a Murray-based marketer of G- and PG-rated films, started harvesting AT&T caller ID data, according to the lawsuit.
To obtain the information, Feature Films purchased a number of telephones lines from AT&T. The Utah company then used auto-dialing to make millions of phone calls to other lines it owned, the suit alleges.
Those calls used "spoofed" numbers that passed through AT&T's caller ID database. When those computer-generated numbers matched those in the database, the name and number of the subscriber were sent to Feature Films or the other companies, and harvested.
"AT&T does not yet know for certain how the defendants used the caller ID information, but suspects it was used for telemarketing purposes," said J.D. Dobson, an AT&T spokesperson.
Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission sued Feature Films for Families Inc., Family Films of Utah and Corporations for Character LC, and their owner, Forrest S. Baker III, for allegedly making 16 million telemarketing calls to people on the National Do Not Call list and deceiving customers. The Utah companies in turn sued the FTC, contending that the agency was overstepping its authority. Those suits are pending.
The Dallas lawsuit alleges that after AT&T cracked down on Feature Films in Utah in 2006, the latter moved operations to other states and then kept moving as it was detected. It also operated in Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, California, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Connecticut, the lawsuit says.
"By constantly adjusting and refining their data mining techniques, defendants have been able to launch a series of cyber-attacks on and gain unauthorized access to AT&T's electronic … database during the past five years," the lawsuit says.
AT&T also said its mobile customers "have been a prime target" of the data mining. Other carriers joining in the suit are Southwestern Bell, TCG Illinois, AT&T Indiana, AT&T California, BellSouth, AT&T Mobility and AT&T DG of Connecticut.
The lawsuit accuses Feature Films for Families and the other defendants of fraud and violations of state and federal telecommunications laws.
AT&T and the other companies are asking the Dallas court for unspecified actual and punitive damages and an injunction permanently prohibiting the defendants from data mining.
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